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| How To Effectively Plan An Indian Wedding And Avoid Last-Minute Hassles |
Just got engaged? Congratulations! It must be an amazing feeling, now that you are about to embark on a new journey. After all, marriage is undoubtedly one of the most important milestones in one's life, it's an incredibly beautiful and special experience. So everyone wishes to make his/her wedding a memorable one, not just for themselves but for everyone involved - their families, close friends, relatives and other guests. However, after the initial euphoria of engagement wears off, when one sits down to plan the wedding, the task starts seeming very daunting. Even more so, if the D-day has been fixed for a sooner date and there isn't much lead-in time left for the event. With so many things to take care of and given the amount of pressure for everything to go right, even the more experienced elders in the family can feel overwhelmed and stressed out.
My cousin got married recently and we had only a little over two month's time to plan the arrangements. Although most things went well just as we had desired but we did face a few hiccups as well along the way. Merely planning the arrangements wouldn't be enough, rather one has to ensure that they remain on the right track throughout. So to make that happen and to avoid last-minute hitches, it would be a good idea to make a to-do-list so that you are better equipped to manage the arrangements.
1. Set a Budget and Stick to it
The first essential thing while planning a wedding is to prepare an overall budget for the wedding and sticking to it. Without a budget in place, people often tend to go overboard while spending and end up messing with the preparations. Therefore the wise thing to do is to figure out the total estimated cost of the wedding, based on each aspect of the event like outfits, jewelry, gifts, make-up charges, wedding venue charges, food and catering and so on and then allotting a certain percentage of the budgeted money to each aspect.
2. Book the Wedding Venue
The second most important step in wedding planning is to
select an appropriate wedding banquet, based on its facilities as well as the number of guests to be invited and book it for the D-day at once. Otherwise the chosen venue mayn't be available that time because good wedding venues often get booked well in advance, much before the start of the wedding season.
3. Prepare the Guest List and Send the Invitations
The wedding guest list needs to be prepared and invitations should be sent to them well in advance (at least a month before the wedding) so that they can plan their trips accordingly. The invitations could be either in form of printed cards (especially meant for the close relatives and family) or e-cards.
4. Book the Vendors
The next step involves finalising and booking the vendors for the wedding like tentwalas, videographer and photographer, the priest, florists, dholwalas, the DJ but first and foremost the wedding caterer. Because let's face it - more than anything else, it's the food served at a wedding party that determines whether the wedding would be a memorable one for the guests or not. Therefore the wedding caterer should be chosen assiduously.
5. Wedding Shopping
Ideally one should start the wedding shopping (outfits, jewelry, shoes and other accessories, gifts for the guests etc) as early as possible, preferably right after the engagement. Otherwise if done with not enough lead-in time left, one wouldn't be able to explore much.
As the wedding date gets closer, keep cross-checking with the booked vendors to ascertain that the arrangements are in place.
Thus wedding planning is a humongous task, and anyone can get cold feet, especially at the final stretch. It helps immensely if you have got helpful hands (family and friends), for then the tasks can be delegated to them. But if there aren't many to assist you, it would be a good idea to either hire a wedding planner or plan your wedding yourself with the help of
wedding planning apps like WedMeGood. You can find vendors, contact and book them, get tonnes of wedding ideas, access your wedding checklist, etc. on the app.
So go on, make your wedding a memorable one!
